People tell stories when things become unbearable. Especially then. Fiction is our way of envisaging the worst, for sure. But it is also our way of envisaging the best, the most out of the box-est, the beautiful thing that you never even dreamed of. It is what we do, as writers, and it is — these days — what we must do. We must imagine things otherwise.
I am asking myself all the time these days, “What difference can I make? I’m old, I’m not a soldier or a politician. I’m not a famous writer, or influencer.” These things are all true. But still, I have to do what I can. And what I can do is write and teach, attend political meetings, help correct the grammar on flyers. And I can keep on flying my wild imagination flag, the flag that brought you: a woman on skates who deals vintage clothing in 2080 Los Angeles, a drop out from college who is part octopus, a boy who challenges Mr. Death on a fence in Long Island, and a religion based on the Anabaptists joining forces with Bunraku puppeteers.
My imagination may be the most valuable of my possessions. And it’s endangered. Because the new regime is coming for my imagination. And yours. The recent take over of the Kennedy Center is not insignificant in this regard. The attempt currently underway is not just to starve the arts, but to kill them. “Die Literatur ist romantisch,” Peter Handke writes, meaning creative writing looks outward AND inward towards the heart. It hopes for more, it stands apart from reality, it demands more — the impossible sometimes, even.
Who writes about the impossible and then thinks about how to encounter it?
Here are some books that I’m reading now.
China Miéville is a self-proclaimed “weird” writer who has promoted a fearless kind of fiction writing that uses fantasy and slipstream to imagine societies that refract and reflect our own. A self-proclaimed leftist, he still writes from beyond the soap box. His work doesn’t ever tell you what to think, but instead creates such strange worlds and situations that you cannot help but wonder what you would do in that circumstance.
I have read THE CITY AND THE CITY and THE SCAR, both of which are incredibly beautiful literature as well as startling stories that are truly mind-bending. I have talked about CITY/CITY before. It’s a detective story set in a city which inhabits the same geographical location as another city, set in a different country and culture and possessing its own language, cuisine, and politics. It’s haunting and funny and gorgeous. SCAR is the second in a fantasy series, but you can easily read it as a stand-alone. It tells the tale of a pirate society, which inhabits an island made of ships lashed together. The protagonist is a linguistics expert who has been — like so many of the city’s inhabitants — gang-pressed into serving the government. The society is surprisingly complex and Bellis’ decisions about how she will and will not cooperate are fascinating and complicated.
Both of these books use all the tropes of the detective novel and the sea faring adventure story in such clever and entertaining ways, that you will laugh at moments recognizing how they are used. From Moby Dick to The Maltese Falcon, Miéville knows it all, and uses it with brilliance. In both books he is also asking what agency we can have in circumstances beyond our control. How do we behave? What do we value and whom do we care for?
I am 2/3’s of the way through the Southern Reach Series by Jeff Vandermeer. These books dance between the areas of horror, fantasy, environmental fiction, and sf. Don’t read them at night. But, that said, these novels tell — from differing points of view — the story of an apparent environmental disaster which has rendered a sector of the coast of someplace in the US — Florida? — uninhabitable and dangerous. How dangerous? What happened exactly to make this place into Area X? Well that is precisely with the scientists and researchers at the Southern Reach Institute are trying to find out. But…. things aren’t going well there. Again, the writing is incredibly beautiful, and despite ourselves we connect with and identify with the pov characters — a biologist, a lighthouse keeper, a psychologist, and a “fixer” for an unnamed government agency — who are all trying to do the right thing from their perspective. At moments verging on satire and at others tending towards the existential and philosophical, Vandermeer asks us to take a hard look at what we think we are doing in our professional lives, and to turn our gaze away from our screens, toward the natural world around us. Can’t we please care more about it, and about each other?
I’ll try to report back again with another set of selections.
Keep reading. Keep writing the weird, the beautiful and the impossible. Keep standing up for freedom and justice and use your writing to challenge and expand our imaginations.
Stephanie Barbé Hammer Writing (Un) Real 
Thank you for all of these suggestions. I think we need another “Writing The Unthinkable” class, now that every new days real events feel more and more unreal and unthinkable. Our writer imaginations are powerfully tools during this age of disinformation. It’s like we are living in The Mad Tea Party.
Robin